


Wayfaring Stranger

by deathwailart



Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Pilgrimages, Reclaiming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a journey to reclaim a home. It is marching off to what might be their deaths though they do not talk of it beyond the words of their contract; he looks at Fíli and at Kíli, his nephews, his heirs, his bright young lads and he tries to imagine them ruined and bloodied, too still and quiet. That might be their fate. This is not some glorious homecoming with fanfare for they will creep as thieves back to their home by hidden doors, tiptoeing so as to disturb no one. It is a pilgrimage to where the bones of their people have by now crumbled to dust after trampling footsteps and molten breath. Erebor is a kingdom of ghosts and memories and maybe their ruler is not so different to what might have been if Thror's lust of gold had continued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wayfaring Stranger

And to be king of Durin's Folk, of the longbeards is unlike being a king to any other place for a folk who believe Durin the Deathless to be just that, to be asleep and within them, carried by them all these years down the line. To be king of Durin's Folk is to feel the weight not only of those alive who remember Erebor and dragon fire scorching them and those who bloodied and battered themselves against the gates of Moria with the howling of orcs and war drums deafening them and who felt fire again for they could not return their dead to the stone as they should but to shoulder the weight of the ones who have known only wandering, who call somewhere else home. His sister-sons, his heirs in Ered Luin who he has tutored the way he was but lessons in kingship, in bearing, they mean little when they live little better than those not of the royal line. They are treated well as all children are and gifted what can be spared for they are like him and their mother (and Thror and Thrain and Frerin) who are Durin's blood and bones, crafted by Mahal himself to be the kings of their people. How can lessons ring true when they only know Erebor from songs and stories. Dís who remembers happier times when all was good and she a precious daughter prized by all of them, third child born to their next king for dwarves do not have children easily and dwarf women were scarce even then. He remembers a monster larger than anything imagination could conjure as it strode towards him and he bellowed, sword in hand, armour ringing even as the dragon belched flame and fury. He remembers having to haul his grandfather, his king, back from the precipice as he reached for gold even as the dragon claimed it. The cradle songs he lulls colicky children to sleep with are sung with a voice that is hoarse from bellowing challenges to great foes, cries to inspire warriors, screams at a king beheaded before a hall defiled. Others sing songs of happier times but he cannot give his nephews who are his heirs that. They are given a song of what was lost to them and what will be reclaimed. It is the best he can give them.  
  
"There is no choice for me," he tells Balin when he could still turn back when an army would not come but he cannot. His pride would not allow it and it is. But is there a choice? To others he could return but they are not held up as all that it is to be a Durin. King in exile, king without a mountain, king of a scattered people mining ore and silver, not gold or jewels where now a dragon sleeps and grows fat and indolent, a dragon with the same lust that claimed his grandfather. The same lust that stirs in him, as dark as the shadows he watched from, the encroaching night where demons festered. What would have become of Erebor had Smaug not seized it and settled himself atop a bed of gold and precious things? Would they have shut themselves in and cut themselves off from the rest of Middle-Earth, alone in darkened halls to sustain themselves on gold? He should not think of his grandfather that way but he remembers being the one to watch and to go to a father who only turned away and said not. Madness runs in this family. He can feel the weight of both key and map at all times. What truly became of Thrain? Thorin followed his grandfather to the gates of Moria a prince and walked away a king of a scattered people, bloodied and sweating atop a pile of corpses clutching the oaken branch he carries now, a thing he has loved and nurtured for years. They thought Thrain dead and he knows not how Gandalf came by these last pieces of Erebor that are not people – they hoard their treasures for everything that survived Smaug is a treasure more valuable that all the mithril beneath the earth and yet still it sickens him. How they speak of them in hushed whispers as though talking of the arkenstone, reverent, worshipful. They are a greedy people for precious things as much as they are for honour. These trinkets are not the treasures of Erebor and he will show them what true wealth is or will die in the attempt.  
  
It is a journey to reclaim a home. It is marching off to what might be their deaths though they do not talk of it beyond the words of their contract; he looks at Fíli and at Kíli, his nephews, his heirs, his bright young lads and he tries to imagine them ruined and bloodied, too still and quiet. That might be their fate. This is not some glorious homecoming with fanfare for they will creep as thieves back to their home by hidden doors, tiptoeing so as to disturb no one. It is a pilgrimage to where the bones of their people have by now crumbled to dust after trampling footsteps and molten breath. Erebor is a kingdom of ghosts and memories and maybe their ruler is not so different to what might have been if Thror's lust of gold had continued.  
  
Perhaps he isn't right to push such thoughts away into corners of his mind. They prey upon him when he lies with closed eyes unable to sleep no matter who is on watch at camp. Too many years of having to sleep out in the open (dwarves were made in the dark beneath the earth and Mahal's children will never sleep easily above ground) with wild things all around them mean he wakes at every sound and barely starts. Movement gives you away. You lie silent and seize your chance to stab a blade deep into stinking orc flesh. Or whatever tries to pick your pockets of what little fills them when you're already near destitute.  
  
Gundaband wargs howl for their blood soon, far too soon and how long has it been now since the foul beasts laid claim to that most ancient of their dwellings where their first father ruled? It is only fitting that this is how their journey is marked, with wargs out of that place giving chase, orcs plundering that most sacred of halls and Gandalf for all he is help will _never_ understand the pain and the shame that they feel in their very souls. The wizard might know their tongue (he won't ask how a wizard knows, he'll swallow it even though their languages are _theirs_ the same as their true names) but he knows nothing of what it is to lose a home that means everything. The will of a wizard is a strange thing to understand but his wounded pride (his downfall, what does he know of Thorin's downfall) is already bruised, he does not need to be poked and prodded before elves in their homes, dirty and without many of their provisions, showing them that which elves should not see. It matters not that Elrond is not Thranduil. The elves have ever looked down on them, hunted them, fought them. They are secure in their homes in valleys and woods without caring for everyone else, timeless and ageless and living in bygone days singing songs as though there is nothing to fear now and then daring to offer wisdom that was not asked for. The plan was to wait for Gandalf. The plan was to avoid Rivendell no matter what they learned. (Another hurt, the moon runes he should have looked for, should have known of, how much are they forgetting now that will be held in the hands of the elves too?) All plans can change.  
  
And though he knew some might die he cannot lose Fíli. (Knows. Not all pilgrims reach the end of their journey. They cannot all survive this dragon when it is only thirteen with one wizard who disappears as he sees fit.) When he sees the stone giant smash against the mountain a savage pain seizes him that he only felt when Erebor fell and when Azog brandished his grandfather's head grinning from ear to ear. When he sees Fíli alive (Durin forgive him but he is the one that matters most of those crushed against the rocks, he would grieve if more had been slain but to lose his heir would be a wound he does not know if he could recover from, not when he has lost so much already) the relief leaves him breathless.  
  
Why he throws himself over the side of the mountain after a burglar he does not know what to make of is beyond him. He has signed the contract and they are only fourteen and he will not see any lost needlessly – everyone holds arms across chests, hauls someone back by what they can reach, shouts and gestures – but this hobbit, what is he to make of him. Little and less in Bag End no matter the wizard and his words but then there was maybe the tentative hope that he might be proven wrong when he came hollering after them with the contract streaming out behind him like a banner. He'll never know what to think of the incident with the trolls where it was an indignity like no other and where he prayed it would not be the end of Thorin Oakenshield and company but he could not thank the hobbit. There was no time and that was not him.  
  
He holds himself tall as a king should before the wretched body of this goblin king – orcs and goblins should not hold titles beyond those given to them by others. Defilers, cretins, thieves and cutthroats. But he holds himself as he would before any other leader and remembers the scorch of shame as he did when he introduced himself in towns of Men. _I am king under the mountain, I am of Durin's Folk and Durin's blood, I am the blood of one made by the Valar_ , he always wanted to growl – not bellow, not shout so his voice would ring off the halls – but he had to swallow it. No matter how often he did he never grew accustomed to the taste of bile. He has to act with dignity here, give nothing away to this corpulent mass of flab and sweat, for himself as much as them. He will not believe the words that drip from this greasy wretch calling himself king upon a throne of bones and filth and the satisfaction he feels when he watches the wizard's blade slice through him tastes just. He only wishes it had been his blade even if it was forged and wielded by the Noldor in days long gone by.  
  
He is at the end of his rope when they flee and something sick roils in him when the hobbit is gone, guilt that some might think he knows nothing of. He knows guilt well because guilt knows no rhyme or reason. Guilt doesn't care if something's possible or not, guilt sits there and feeds on every part of you that questions, that doubts and he has known a lifetime of guilt for those he could not save, that he could not do, what he could not provide. He hopes the hobbit is gone. The hobbit who has a home. He envies him that space that is his. This hobbit has only had to worry about cakes for dinner and courtesies, not about where his next meal is coming from or how to defend his home from monsters. Of course he snaps and snarls at him, this gentle soul who cannot wield a weapon.  
  
And perhaps that is how he disarms him so utterly again.  
  
Disarms him with the truth. For speaking it without shame or hesitance. For offering to help those who have spurned him, scorned him, have not treated him as an equal. He speaks as though it is the easiest thing to the world to uproot himself and join a band of hardy folk who could not be more different to him but perhaps he does understand it all. He wants to return to what Thorin so desperately craves. And he wants that. Maybe that is the wisdom of wizards. All the gold in Erebor does not matter a hobbit of the Shire offers what Dain, his kin, would not.  
  
And then come the wolves. And with the wolves come ghosts who are hungrier than ever, who have sharpened edges and a malice nursed in darkened places in a festering pit of his own kind. Pushed to the brink again, thirteen dwarves, one hobbit and one wizard against the type of fury only vengeance can breed.  
  
If gold stirs great lust in his belly, curling and coiling and sinking its hooks deep ( _claws like meat hooks_ Bofur said and he is not wrong in that) then fire drives all reason from him. Fire stole home, melted flesh until it looked like the wax candles he worked by when reading his histories for even a warrior who would be king needed to know all there was to know. Fire consumed bodies and what was once seen as a poor way to go became an honourable thing. It was the only way to cope with such a loss, to take what had been stolen from them, to scour amongst the ashes and try to shape it to their will. Fire rages below him and he hears Smaug not Azog for a moment and draws Orcrist, raises that oaken branch he has clutched for long years and charges. Breaks his bones and batters his body and reaches – he's always reaching, is always stretching farther and farther and one day he might split himself in two but would that even be enough for what he needs and wants – for a sword because he will be defiant to the end and again this hobbit comes. This hobbit who didn't know what a warg sounded like when first he heard the dreadful howl. The thing he wields is not even a sword and still Thorin wants to push him back and where are the others?  
  
He thinks he will go to the halls of the Maker. He will see father and mother, grandfather, he will see Frerin and all those friends he lost and he will feel ashamed and small in their eyes.  
  
He wakes to a wizard's hand upon his brow and a pain so great he knows he must be alive as flesh is forced back together and bones reknit. The stink of warg overpowers that of smoke and above him eagles screech. They raise him up as a befits a king but he has no time to reassure them or to give the speech he should when his eyes can see only this unassuming halfling missing his brass buttons. He thunders because he cannot think at first how to phrase this unexpected gratitude because he never imagined this when mere hours ago he was the one to haul a sodden mess back from the brink of death and he feels as though he has been struck when he makes his admission. Kings are not wrong. Kings are never wrong. Yet he was and there is a freedom to admitting it. It has been a long time since any other than his nephews and sister saw an honest smile on his face and even though he stands bloodied and battered he feels lighter than he did when he first set foot in Bag End.  
  
Erebor looms in the distant with the song of a thrush. He looked back but once as someone young trying to shoulder burdens he could not fully count, the mountain obscured by smoke still roaring on the pines. He sees it again capped with snow against a blue sky and his breath sticks in his chest and would it not cause such alarm given his injuries he would fall to his knees and raise his head towards the sky with a grateful smile. Instead he draws himself up as a king should even as his insides rub raw against one another and allows himself to hope. He looks to the hobbit who has known only a life of plenty, of gentle swells, vivid greens, things that grow and warmth and surety and allows himself to agree.  
  
The worst must be behind. He has surely seen the worst of this world by now.


End file.
